Even as U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to deploy more military forces to Afghanistan - what he has called 'the central front' in former President George W. Bush's 'global war on terror' - a consensus on overall U.S. strategy there remains elusive.

When it opened its doors to the public in 1936, the Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO) adopted the motto: 'Give a man value, give a man service, and he will support you.'

Alan Jara, the former governor of the central province of Meta, was released by Colombian guerrillas on Tuesday, instead of Monday as originally scheduled. Former regional lawmaker for the western province of Valle del Cauca, Sigifredo López, was scheduled to have been freed on Wednesday, but his handover has now been postponed until Thursday.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) said Tuesday that its research has connected three mainstream U.S. anti-immigration groups to racist ideas.

The United Nations is urgently appealing for 613 million dollars to aid more than a million desperate civilians in the ruins of Gaza, where schools, hospitals, houses, factories and even farmland were obliterated during the three-week assault by Israeli air and ground forces.

A powerful coalition of civic organisations is calling for a complete overhaul of the legal framework of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to force it to fulfil its public broadcasting mandate.

The Brazilian government, and its Environment Ministry in particular, accepted a risky bet by agreeing to voluntary goals for curbing deforestation in the Amazon, giving the country greater weight in the global talks on fighting climate change.

A prominent law professor says the U.S. Defence Department is issuing questionable data on the number of Guantanamo detainees who have been released 'and then returned to the battlefield' because the government 'is now in a position where they have to find some bad guys - even if they have to invent them by naming people who were never there'.

Twenty-five centuries ago, ancient Athenians set aside part of their agora, the central public plaza, as a place where people seeking temporary work and others seeking workers could meet.

Apo Aguila, a computer programmer, moved to Singapore in 2005, frustrated with the news that Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had allegedly cheated in the 2004 presidential election.